Encyclopedia

DRIVERS: TREVOR TAYLOR

The son of a garage owner from the town of Wickersley, near Rotherham, Trevor Taylor started racing at the age of 19 in a Triumph TR2 and then moved on to the competitive world of 500cc Formula 3 racing with a Staride-JAP. He moved on to a Cooper-Norton and won the British championship in 1958, which earned him the chance to move up to Formula 2 with the Ace Garage (Rotherham) team in 1959.

In 1960 he raced for Team Lotus in Formula Junior and did occasional F2 races with the team. In 1961, while winning another Formula Junior title, he began his F1 career as a Lotus driver alongside Jim Clark, standing in for an injured Innes Ireland. At the end of the year he went to South Africa as Clarkís team mate for four non-championship races and finished second to Clark at Kyalami (in his wheeltracks), survived a huge accident when his suspension failed in the second, retired with mechanical failure from the third but came through it all to win (ahead of Clark) in the final race.

In the course of 1962 he finished second in Holland, survived a huge crash at Spa. In the non-championship GPs he was third at Solitude, won the Mexican GP and in South Africa in December won the Natal GP at Westmead. He stayed with Team Lotus in 1963 but because of accident and unreliability in World Championship events was completely overshadowed by Clark, who dominated the title. That meant that in 1964 Taylor was moved on to the British Racing Partnership, having lost his place at Lotus to Peter Arundell. At BRP his efforts were handicapped by the BRP chassis and his best finish was sixth.

That same year he and his sister Anita raced in touring cars with BMC Mini Cooper Ss which were run by their own team, known as Aurora Gear Racing. This ran Brabham F2 cars for Taylor in 1965 and 1966 but then he moved to join Ralph Broadís Broadspeed touring car team, enjoying much success in the next few years. He returned to F1 just once with the short-lived Shannon car but also competed in sports cars and won the Tourist Trophy at Oulton Park in 1967 at the wheel of a Lola T70. He then became a frontrunner in Formula 5000 and continued to race the big cars until he retired from the sport in 1972.